"The new owner hopes to spin off the smaller papers in separate deals by the end of the summer to help finance the purchase of the Register, according to an editor at the paper who was not authorized to speak publicly. These are the Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo.; the Appeal-Democrat in Marysville, Calif.; the Desert Dispatch in Barstow; the Porterville (Calif.) Record; the Daily Press in Victorville; and the Sun in Yuma, Ariz."

Tryon's post didn't go over too well with Carmen Boles, the Gazette's director of content. She told Tryon to delete it because it violated the paper's social media policy. The policy "prohibits you from posting disparaging or defamatory statements about the company or its business interests, but you should also avoid social media communications that might be misconstrued in a way that could damage the company's goodwill and business reputation, even indirectly."

The reporter refused, on the grounds that the post was on his personal account, and besides, it was an article from a newspaper, not a scurrilous attack on the company. He e-mailed Boles the following, according to JimRomenesko.com: "Not trying to cause a ruckus, but I posted a news story and included a quote from the article. I did not interject any opinion. I'm not sure where I'm violating policy."

Not surprisingly, the flap attracted a great deal of attention on media news aggregators. And much of the reaction was supportive of the reporter, not the paper.

This week, the Gazette did a 180, reinstating Tryon. But it was too late. The damage had been done. Tryon, quite understandably, decided that this was hardly the kind of management he wanted to work for. And so he resigned.

"I think after I realized there was support from so many people locally and nationally that I'm not really interested in working for an organization [where] we would even have this conversation; that there was never a dialogue to begin with ó and that's unfortunate," he told the Colorado Springs Independent's Indy Blog.